June 17, 2005

Using Articles for Content and Adsense - The Easy Way Out - Part 2

We all want to believe that a resource like the myriad of articles available online is good thing, and it is. The problem lies in taking a good thing and going overboard with it. I will get to the point and list some examples that illustrate why I believe using articles for content for AdSense sites is not going to last:

1. In 1999, I worked for a company that offered doorway pages, and you could buy a package that created dozens of optimized pages based on your site's look/feel and get ranked for a number of keywords. As I recall, they used software to generate the doorway pages and it did work for the short term. That technique started fading by 2001 as search engines clamped down (although like all my examples, some people still use it, and get away with it. Usually if you do things manually and not using software to autogenerate, you can fly under the radar or for example building pages by hand, it's not a problem).

2. I am sure there are earlier examples similar to this, but back in 2002 a colleague of mine told me how a mutual acquaintance had taken his self defense site from nowhere to the top on Google by accumulating links. As I recall, he had accumulated about 850 links coming in after discovering this little technique worked. And boy did it work. In fact, he didn't need relevant links - a link from Grandpa's Hobby Site was fine - and this was before the Pagerank was even thought about - so all he had to do was keep accumulating. Today this site has only 56 links in Google (but 928 in MSN).

Word travels fast online, and withing 6 months we saw all kinds of sites asking for links, and Google started cracking down on links pages, in particular those created by software that left a definite "footprint." Then we also saw link exchanges and link farms and while it was good at first, alot of people saw their site lose rankings or banned outright by the time Google was done.

3. More recently, many affiliate programs provided their affiliates with premade, private label/co-branded sites, that had the same content, product descriptions, pictures and included the affiliate links. It was a handy way to quickly get a new site and promote affiliate products without spending any time or money. Ask any affiliates using these "co-branded" sites, they have been systematically dropped or losing rankings in Google (and other SEs like Yahoo) over the last year. The Webmaster forums had lots of complaints on cookie cutter affiliate sites filling Search Engine results and it seemed that nothing would be done about it (however, Google includes both doorways and Affiliate sites in their SEO Guidelines). Typically it looks like nothing is happening to these sites/pages, then we have a Florida or Bourbon Google update and some people are up in arms that their sites are gone!

Bottom line:

1. Quick and Dirty may work short term, but long term it won't - especially if everyone is doing it AND you are using duplicate content and automated software to go crazy. But be ready and don't complain when the search engines catch up with you.

2. Doing things slowly (or on a smaller scale) is a pain - I know - but do you want revenues 1-2 years from now? If making money for 3 months is OK, then quick and dirty techniques is fine for you. I have done both, but I know when I want to take a risk - and when I don't.

3. Are you able to keep ahead of the curve with new ideas? If you keep jumping on ideas after it's been done by other people and well known, you will have a hard time to continue making money online year after year. I am _always_ looking ahead for trends and new ideas, hopefully 6 months to 1 year ahead. Using ready made articles is not ahead of the curve by any means, and not unique enough content used as is.